How are my competitors ranked above me?

[catnic]

I just dont get how my competitors rank above me on Google.co.uk when they have:

1) Less link popularity than me
2) No use of H1 tags
3) Very little body text

Not saying my site is perfect but I've tried tweaking a few things and I went down in the ranking results!

My site is <snip> and the compeitor site is <snip>

The keyword I used was 'steel lintels'

[jimbeetle]

Less link popularity than me
This is one I usually delve into when folks say it. You have to look beyond the number of links and look at the quality of the links. What types of sites are linking to your competitor? What is the PR of the linking page? Link text, page title? What pages link to that page?

Doing a rigorous backlink analysis can be time consuming, but often uncovers simple reasons for ranking "oddities."

but I've tried tweaking a few things and I went down in the ranking results
Okay, what kind of things did you tweak?

[catnic]

Cool thanks! I'll be looking links in depth. Like you said time consuming but can be rewarding!

moving keywords words closer to the begining of page titles, meta keywords and description.

But for some reason my H1 tag doesnt seem to be appearing!

[jimbeetle]

moving keywords words closer to the begining of page titles, meta keywords and description.
Any changes to page titles can affect rankings, good or bad. Meta keywords should have no affect. Descriptions are not used by Google in ranking, but can affect the indexing of a site and also user click through rate. As always, best practice is unique page titles and meta descriptions for each page. Be topically descriptive for the title and explanatory for the description.

If you don't already have a Google Webmaster Tools account for the site, sign up for one now. The folks at G are continually adding to the information it shows and it can be quite helpful in diagnosing problems.

But for some reason my H1 tag doesn't seem to be appearing!
Hmm, that can't help. Run your pages through the W3c's HTML validator (http://validator.w3.org/), it should help spot the problem. They have a few other validators and tools here (http://www.w3.org/QA/Tools/).